Casting By (Tom Donahue, 2013)*
Yesterday Once More (Johnnie To, 2004)
The Hole (Tsai Ming Liang, 1998)
One Week (Buster Keaton, 1920)
Train (Darius Clarke Monroe, 2010)
22 Jump Street (Phil Lord & Chris Miller, 2014)
All the Boys Are Called Patrick (Jean-Luc Godard, 1959)
Casino (Martin Scorsese, 1995)
Indiana Jones & the Temple of Doom (Steven Spielberg, 1984)*
The Addams Family (Barry Sonnenfeld, 1991)
Father of the Bride (Vincente Minnelli, 1950)
...
-Winner of the week goes to Tsai Ming Liang's The Hole, an exuberant picture that somehow mixes together sci-fi, musical, comedy, and romance in just over an hour and half at two-three different settings. I found the film to be incredibly sweet in its gentle observations of neighborly apartment life. Tsai doesn't strive to impress with flashy camera moves, instead he comes from the Ozu school of thought with mostly static, still shots. He only moves the camera when absolutely needed, making him more of a director who takes time putting together compositions rather than creating an intricate mise-en-scene. Unlike Ozu, his characters are pretty broad, big, and wild, much like a cartoon. This musical numbers only pull out the full looniness of the characters' inner thoughts and feelings we see during the non-musical bits. It's absolutely absurd, yet ultimately lovely and moving.
-A close second to the winner of the week would be Phil Lord's & Chris Miller's 22 Jump Street, my most anticipated sequel of 2014. I shouldn't have been surprised to find that it not only met, but exceeded my expectations tenfold. While I'd argue that the duo didn't quite send up college like they send up high school in the previous one (the satire of the first was hilariously spot-on commentary about how high school has changed in some ways), it did provide the best and most consistent belly laughs of any movie of the last few years. Channing Tatum & Jonah Hill were made for these performances and they heighten the film to Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis level comedy. I want more, but the credits satirize and demean the possibility of a sequel, so I doubt we will see one, but whatever Lord & Miller decides to do next, I support 100%. They are directors on top of their game.
-Asterisks (*) denote revisits and I had two this week. Casting By sheds light on the most overlooked section of Hollywood jobs - casting directors. The fact that there's no Oscar for them is unbelievable. We need to appreciate them more because the majority of the performance comes from the casting. Perhaps there are certain actors who want to hide this very fact. There is so much nepotism in Hollywood. No one wants more light on it. The second revisit was Indiana Jones & the Temple of Doom, or, as I like to see it, the most underrated Steven Spielberg movie. Personally speaking, I enjoy it more than Indiana Jones & the Last Crusade. Kate Capshaw's character is annoying, but that's the point of her character! I think her performance is quite good. I don't have a problem with Short Round either. Possibly Spielberg's funniest film as well! There's cheesiness, sure, but that's part of the genre it's parodying. All in good fun.
-This was a week for shorts! Buster Keaton's One Week was simply sublime. I don't usually single out "parts" or "scenes", but there is a self-censoring moment with the cameraman (effectively obliterating the fourth wall in the uttermost playful way possible) that I found strikingly genius, though not surprising given the directorial style of Keaton. The film isn't as funny as I was hoping, but the last scene did elicit a huge laugh from me. I believe this quote sums up Keaton succinctly; "I always want the audience to out-guess me, and then I double cross them". On the other end of the spectrum, I discovered Darius Clark Monroe's short film Train from a series of youtube jumps. The film put me under a spell with its simple, economical compositions, edited together to create an atmosphere where anything can happen. I was taken most by the ending which subverts expectations of how we view and criticize masculinity by society's standard of what we expect it to be. Rare are the films that challenge the core of what we expect from men. I hope for more from Monroe as soon as possible. Lastly, I checked out a short film directed by one Jean-Luc Godard and written by the vastly underrated Eric Rohmer: All the Boys Are Called Patrick. File under "Films where Godard decided to have fun instead politicize or pontificate" along with A Woman is a Woman, Breathless, Band of Outsiders, and Masculine Feminine. I loved it. It's not much more than a short entertaining screwball comedy about two girls who are picked up by the same guy but don't know it yet, hence the title. They talk about the guy and criticize each other's guys in favor of their own guy, much to the enjoyment of the audiences. Rohmer lightly begins his auteur theme of playing with perspective while Godard throws his cheeky criticism of film (as seen in the screenshot above). All three shorts offer a different view on masculinity: One Week sympathizes with it, Train questions it, and All the Boys Are Called Patrick humors it. What a coincidence I view all these specific short films in one week!
-Cinespia! I saw The Addams Family at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery and... it was... okay? I saw the plot twist a mile away (sad that the reboot of the property has to have this particular story), the jokes were too far and in between (and without much variety which makes the whole thing monotonous), and I only cared for about half the cast (mostly Huston, Ricci, and Lloyd). That said, the film has some uproarious moments (mostly thanks to, again, Huston, Ricci, and Lloyd, but also the romance subplot involving Cousin Eddy) and there's some brilliant nods to the original (Fester puts a lightbulb in his mouth, it lights up). I can't hate it. Also, the scene with the blood on stage could NEVER BE DONE TODAY (parentheses).
-Rounding out the week, Martin Scorsese's Casino was quite disappointing, given the talent involved. DeNiro, Pesci, and Stone were all aces, as was the editing and general production, but the plot is definitely lacking. It's difficult to resist comparing the film to Goodfellas because they're so similar in execution and scope. It's as if the producers asked Scorsese to do a Goodfellas 2.0 but it ends up feeling like Goodfellas 1.5 without a complex female character and pov and a hugely charismatic performance in its center like Ray Liotta's that propels the film's narrative even in the slower parts of the film. If anything, the film makes me appreciate Goodfellas more. Vincente Minnelli's Father of the Bride, though different in genre and story, is quite similar in its problems. In Bride, the stakes and conflict never really hits an apex which could make the film boring if it weren't for the splendid, subtle performance by Spencer Tracy. He carries the film without breaking a sweat! My favorite quote of the film is when our young Liz Taylor breaks down and says, "This isn't a wedding, it's a business deal!" which could be self-conscious, but I take it as a shift in the public's view of what weddings are and (apparently) should be; not business deals like they previously were. The proceedings took a sly little turn that began to feel like heavy duty wedding propaganda, only further pushed by its remake in the early 1990s. Last, but certainly not least, is Johnnie To's wonderful screwball comedy Yesterday Once More. In short, it's Alain Resnais' Trouble in Paradise. Playful but tricky, To somehow makes a film confusing yet clear; I don't know exactly how it happened, but I know what happened. My mind can't quite make out the intricacies, but I can feel out the film well enough to understand its last moments. To knows how to direct big stars - even though I don't know the extent of their popularity, I see how he fetishizes Lau and Cheng together while illuminating the gracefulness you'd expect from what a film star should be. I have fallen in love with these two.
Now bring Blind Detective to the states, Johnnie!
-W.E.
